


Sea Salt

by basketcasewrites



Series: x Reader [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hijabi reader, Multi, Non-binary Reader - Freeform, Other, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, fat reader, ngl it's just me aged a few years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 19:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16582427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basketcasewrites/pseuds/basketcasewrites
Summary: We have a flat that overlooks the ocean.It is on the second floor, and when we open the windows in the studio salt touches our faces and stings our lips. We don't really open the windows in the studio.





	Sea Salt

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. I feel like a white cis male sci-fi writer and it's intoxicating

We have a flat that overlooks the ocean.

It is on the second floor, and when we open the windows in the studio salt touches our faces and stings our lips. We don't really open the windows in the studio.

Surprising for me, but my memory of when we first moved here is almost vivid.

The hours long drive until the city was behind us, glaring lights belonging to another world now. The loose gravel under our aged tyres. Venom poking their head out the window, staring at the stretch of sand and sea as if nothing more beautiful ever existed.

Scents and memories are intricately tied, isn't that what they say? Maybe that is to account for my vivid memory - that fine salt smell that has come to be everything I know.

It clings to us all. Is a layer over Venom that itches my skin when they curl around me; is insistent when Eddie slips out at dawn and back an hour later; is in the hair of my eyelashes and the thin scarf I often drape around my head of boundless curls.

"We are the salt people," I say, leaning against the kitchen counter. My nose to my arm, I breathe in the amalgam of sea and shower gel. The hint of Eddie's cologne. "That's what they must call us in town."

"I doubt it," Eddie answers, a small smile dancing under the beard beginning to engulf his face. He reaches past me and pulls the non-stick spray from the cupboard, this close his beard lightly scratches against my skin.

When was the last time he shaved? An absent wonder.

I run a hand through the scruff. My fingernails catch against his cheek as his lips, pulled into a sweet smile, catch the palm of my hand in a quick kiss before he turns to the heated stove.

✴️

We drove into this town with no semblance of a plan, rolled in with no idea of what we were doing or where we were going. With three suitcase and two bags and nothing much else to our name.

 _All we knew?_ I cannot positively say we have ever known anything in our entire lives.

 _What were we doing?_ We were just... We were just getting away.  
That's all we have ever wanted to do— to get away from everything and everyone, to find our peace.

"I think that flat's for sale," I mentioned during a stop for lunch along the coast.

The fading sign had caught my eye, the two-story nestled into rock.

 **Apartment.** Venom, head nestled in the crook between Eddie's neck and shoulder, narrowed their eyes at the offered correction.

Eddie swallowed a burp— funny how I still remember. "Can't hurt to check it out," he said, on the end of a shrug.

I am a child of rundown cities and crumbling buildings.

There is something unsettling about walking from your front door to feel sand under your feet, to open your windows and hear the cacophony that is the ocean.

Something strange about not needing to wake with an alarm because we have nowhere in which to rush.

We wake in time for a late breakfast most days. _An early lunch_ , if Venom is feeling particularly pedantic.

In this spacious home of two bedrooms, of two beds and four sofas and a day bed on the covered balcony, we are a scramble of limbs tangled in one King-sized bed.  
A mess of knotted hair and familiar morning breath, of Venom listlessly entwining themself around the curves of our bodies as they lay awake; weaving us together in a messy human-symbiote blanket.

They often wait for Eddie and I to wake naturally.

On those days when they refuse to wait... Eddie and I have grown used to occasionally being woken by a flurry of enthusiastic kisses or sloppy stripes licked up the sides of our faces.

✴️

The studio is the smallest room in our _apartment_.

All blue paint so pale it is almost white. Thin translucent curtains falling over almost seamless windows adorning three of the plants covered walls.

Circles stain the windowsill from where my tea has dripped and decorated.

"Should I open a window?" Eddie asks.

We used to joke that this room belonged to me, that I was the keeper and monarch of the sanctuary.  
In many ways, I think that's what I have become.

I hum under my breath as I finger at the tip of a leaf, drying and dying with the change of the season. "No," I say, "Leave them closed."

Sometimes I feel as if my existence has spanned a million years. The years live in the framework of my skeleton, in those spaces between my bones and in the tension of my muscles.

I am only twenty-six.

I am only one billion. If you believe what the crack of my bones say, what the almost constant rub of my hand at the back of my neck means.

Staring out the window, I catch sight of five children along the coast.

A sigh that is almost involuntary escapes me, finds a way out of the well of my lungs and into this closed-off room that somehow still invites into it the taste of sea salt.

Eddie rubs at a spot on the window.  
I watch him, in silent awe as the sunset pink touches his skin and colours it to match the world outside.

If I was an artist I would readily draw him.

For how much I long to draw him and Venom, if I was an artist I would probably never stop drawing.

A cold hand drops from the window, lands on mine. "Why are you shaking?"

I do not know. Ever since I was sixteen - a child really - I have been attacked by these shivering fits.

Venom slips their way out from Eddie's shirt.

 **Why are you shaking?** they ask before I can answer.

"Just cold," I answer. The two are relentless in how much they care, and would not stop asking.

"Do you want to go inside? We can go to bed, or sit around and light a fire."

**_Or_ ** **we could** **cuddle.**

My shoulders raise in a shrug.

"A tempting offer, my loves," I say, because it is; because there isn't really anything better than the three of us wrapped together. "Let's just stay here for a little while longer."

Eddie grins. "I thought you didn't like being one of the salt people?"

"Ssh," I hiss on a quiet laugh, on another shiver. "Don't hold my words against me."

"I'm not holding any words against you." Arms raised in mock defeat. "Just wondering aloud."

Another shiver travels up my spine and Venom slithers out from under Eddie's shirt, reaches out to coil around me. **Can I—?** They hesitate for just a second.

"Yeah, sweetheart, you can."

They are ink pulling away from Eddie to stretch over my arms and across the considerable width of my stomach that is covered in a thin T-shirt.  
If we were people who believed in such mundane separations - such of what is _mine_ and what is _yours -_ I would say this shirt is Eddie's. He bought it in his size; it fits me like a glove.

I do not wear my hijab around them. I do not remember exactly when I stopped, only that we have been one for so long that I do not need to.

Venom makes their way over the length of my body and, with a subtle hand, I dust my hair over my shoulder. Long and brown, a mess of curls, it hangs over my back to hide the slight hunch I have.

Muted sadness tinges the edges of Eddie's smile, his eyes desperately taking me in.

 **The** **hunch in your back,** Venom says, in their voice that is gravel on winding roads leading home and thunderstorms in the distance, **is my favourite part of you.**

I shake my head. And if those are tears dotting my vision, I choose to ignore them. "It's— It's awful," I manage to choke.

 _My back,_ I think to whisper, _is a bent and broken thing; it is the result of my_ _life-long_ _slouch, my eternal desire to bury into the core of myself even as I dream of touching fingertips to clouds._

The love I have for myself is almost infinite. I wish for my self love to take up as much space as I do, I wish to wear my self love like the oversized shirt that on me is not oversized.

It almost is.

But, when my eyes and my hands and my mind alight upon that crook, I am a well of self-unwelcoming.

Venom pushes my hair aside.

Their limbs, drawn into cold tendrils brush against my skin and send sets of shivers up my spine.  
Their kiss is a slow touch finding me in waves of surprise, of muted joy.

 **It is proof of how much you have endured to get here.** There is the kiss again, almost tentative.

"Weak," Eddie teases softly. Hazel to depthless brown, our gazes find each other.

When he drops to the ground, I watch.

Venom is a cocoon of ink slowly growing around me. Eddie a presence kneeling before me.

He takes my hands in his. Kisses each knuckle with a reverence that shakes me, meets my eyes with an intensity that forces me to look out the window.

Outside the studio the world is the same.

The sun makes her steady decline; the sky paints itself in the colours of pearls and dying fires; the ocean greets the sand in gentle kisses, in loving embrace.

His lips press to my wrists. To the bare skin, the stretches of scarred tissue that hides under sleeves.

"My love," Eddie says softly. Venom pulls a sound from his throat, guttural and almost unimpressed. " _Our_ love. You are beautiful."

And I wonder if I taste like sea salt.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see how I procrastinate, shoot me some asks or just hang out, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shuriidyke) or at my [Venom side blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/unholyvenom)


End file.
